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The Graveyard - Products No Longer Supported => Routers / COVR => DIR-857 => Topic started by: dandantx on April 21, 2012, 07:55:27 PM

Title: USB 3.0 Hard drive sharing over network problems
Post by: dandantx on April 21, 2012, 07:55:27 PM

So I've got the Dir-857 with a Rosewill Rx-358 external USB 3.0 enclosure and a WD 1.5TB green drive.  The computer can see and modify the contents of the drive just fine, but I can't get my Blu-ray player to get files from it.  I've tried the latest panasonic and LG players.  Each can see the DLNA:DIR857, but not the folder structure or the files.  What am I doing wrong?

Title: Re: USB 3.0 Hard drive sharing over network problems
Post by: JavaLawyer on April 23, 2012, 04:45:28 AM

Is your storage enclosure connected directly to your DIR-857 or tethered to a PC on your LAN? I haven't personally tried using DLNA to access files on a storage device directly connected to a DIR-8XX -- but if this is your setup, I can try performing a test of my own tonight/tomorrow.  ???

Title: Re: USB 3.0 Hard drive sharing over network problems
Post by: dandantx on April 23, 2012, 07:55:29 PM

The enclosure is connected via USB 3.0 to the DIR-857.  The Blu-ray player at one time did see just the first folder in each level of folders and some but not all of the files in those folders.  Now I can't get it to do even that.
My plan was to use this as a mini NAS for home movies.

Title: Re: USB 3.0 Hard drive sharing over network problems
Post by: Doctor Doom on April 24, 2012, 07:45:41 AM

My suggestion is to verify compatibility between the DLNA server and the bluray players. Format a basic 2/4/8/16GB thumbdrive, copy a few movies, pictures and music. Then connect it to the router and try. If it works then my guess is something with the files. Could be anything from way too many folders/sub folders or a file having a funny character in the filename. The thumbdrive test is basically to even see if the two will even talk.

Personally I am not a fan of UPNP-AV/DLNA. Even from day one I wondered why media players don't just use SMB/Samba. Finally WD Live and a few others including Boxee Box provides both UPNP/DLNA and Samba and there is a night and day difference in terms of ease of use and just "getting the movie to play!".

I checked a few of the new Panasonic models and they have "network drive access" on the spec sheet. If this is what I think it is, you'd be much better off using that instead. Like I said, if you can see the share on your network then you can forget DLNA completely. The overall performance is usually better as well.


Hope this helps